Big_Stu

On 28/07/2022 at 09:54, Joebethell said:

Hi don't mind at all it's a hyperflux pickup on my bass it's pretty powerful and bright comes to life with pedals 

Cool, that's the same pickups that Dave Hill of Slade had in all of his John Birch guitars, including the Superyob.

I've got a matched pair of John Birch Magnums in my bass.

On 18/06/2022 at 11:47, JohnDaBass said:

John Birch built some fantastic guitars and basses in the late 60' and early 70's. He designed and made his own pick-up's which had 9(?) pole pieces. John also modified guitars and basses by adding his pick-up's and wiring. So the term "Birched" refers to the EBO having a Birch pick-up added at the bridge with the additional wiring.

Slade used John Birch guitars or check out Dai Shell's John Birch SG on Sassafras YouTube vids. 

Is that a Magnum or Hyperflux that's been added to yours? If you don't mind me asking. I met John a few times when he built my custom EB3, mad as a box of frogs, but a bit of a rogue too by all accounts.

I was "down the pub" with my other half to meet up with one Jim Lea, ex of Slade; just before the lockdowns started.

At one point she took great pleasure in telling him that I thought The Beatles are over-rated. The withering look I got off him is imprinted in my memory forever.

On 02/05/2022 at 19:16, Woody1957 said:

Jimmy Lea from Slade used similar,  2 amps plus 4 cabs at Sheffield City Hall in the early 70's when l went to see them...wall of sound and very, very loud. Would have been my ultimate rig back in the day. Glwts.

 Jim used 361's which (iirc) had just the pre-amp in the head and the power amp was built into the cabs. He ran two cabs off one head, with an identical set up as spare.

On 04/12/2021 at 16:11, Joebethell said:

Just realised I never put up the photos of my gibson/birch bass. So here it is 

Is that a recent purchase? I saw a very similar on eBay in the not too distant past.

Often covered but did anyone do it better than this?

On 25/06/2021 at 21:49, pineweasel said:

Can’t agree with this. Gimme Shelter is one of the Stones finest, and has one of the greatest intros ever

I thought that too, but have to give due credit to the Grand Funk Railroad cover of it.

On 21/06/2021 at 21:14, Joebethell said:

Hi just seen this thread and thought I would tell about my John Birch bass. 

I was playing with a band in the Wolverhampton area (grew up around wolves/staffs border) and was looking for a new bass to suit the garage rock/indie our band was playing at the time it was 2006 when I came across an advert in the Express and Star that peaked my interest gibson EBO/3 at a good price. 

I went to look at the bass and fell instantly in love with its sound from the deep heavy mudbucker and strange bridge pickup.The seller explained the bass had been modified by John birch at some point in the past and the bridge pickup and bridge has been added to the bass at some point either way the faded cherry Gibson was leaving with me. 

I still have the bass and will be a treasured possession along with my guild starfire for a long time to come. 

Still have the old hand written receipt 

John had a bit of a rep for modifying Gibsons, and other brands but especially Gibsons. he told me himself that his inspiration for his J1 guitar style was to mirror the cutaway on a Les Paul to make the body symmetrical. He was quite scathing of Gibsons in general. His SG copy made the horns more pronounced. Some of his mods have had a "Customised by John Birch" metal plaque added below the bridge or the back of the headstock.

Interesting to see the EB0/3 description. Could it be a bass that was originally an EB0 but adding a pickup has made it EB3 spec. I had just such a bass, it had been badly refinished cherry after being inn a shop window too long and the front of it was bleached to "walnut". The mod on mine wasn't a John Birch job though.

There's, or was, a Scottish tribute to RATM called Radge Against The Machine. Incredibly clever, "radge" is a term of abuse up there, as many words are come to think of it.

On 08/03/2021 at 08:47, TJ1 said:

That is the minimum finger/plectrum string strikes per minute across all/any notes on the fretboard.

It would have been a good one to ask Lemmy, but he'd have just replied with his death stare.

Easy to rack up BPM if you're one of those grunge kids that hammers the E string and keep the other three* for spares.

* other basses with more than four strings are available.

In October '78 Slade were in the doldrums after being usurped by punk, and were playing any dive that would have them. They were booked to do a week's residency of the Cavendish Club in Blackburn, Lancs. It started on the Monday night, with almost zero publicity. A few fans travelled but were turned away due to a strict dress code, so in the end the crowd in this 1000 seat night club numbered 19, a bouncer told me. When they came on Nod said "Jeeeesus, did you all come on the same bus? Because there's so few of you we'll just do a quick golden oldies set, OK?" Which is what they did.

I knew a small number of the fans there already, and have since met four others. So it's the only gig by a name band I've been to where I could actually name half of the crowd.

I was chatting with Jim Lea last year and reminded him of the gig, which he remembered. When I told him the low turnout was partly due to dress code rejections he was surprised and said "I thought it was cos we were crap!"

On 14/10/2020 at 16:35, Misdee said:

Sounds fixable. Look for a specialist hifi dealer in your area ( if you have one) and ask if they have someone they can recommend who does repairs on audio equipment. As you have already found out, if  you have a CD63KI they will understand why you want to get it fixed. There are loads of old machines out there to provide cannibalised parts if Marantz can't provide the. 

There were a couple, but the best one was taken over by SevenOaks and doesn't do repairs now, or help with them; the other closed down. I'll try Manchester when it's a bit safer to go.

On 07/10/2020 at 21:52, Misdee said:

The CD63KI is indeed a true classic. It's still a great-sounding piece of kit twenty-odd years after it came out .

If the deck in question has started skipping when you are trying to play a disc, there is a  good chance that what has happened is that the lubricant in the transport has dried out. It can  usually be re-lubricated by an  hifi repairer. The  particular Phillips transport the the CD63KI used was very prone to that fault  developing as the years pass. 

What happened was at first the right channel kept cutting out, it would come back the next day but happened more and more often. Then it went totally silent. It still powers up etc and looks fully functional, apart from no sound.

On 07/10/2020 at 09:11, jassthebass said:

Hi @Big_Stu

 

Re Marantz, I assume you've checked these people out ?

http://sstonline.co.uk/our-clients/

 

 

The place in Blackpool referred me to them, and they said the same about getting hold of parts. But thanks for the reminder, I'll give them another go if I don't get anywhere with Matt's ides.

On 06/10/2020 at 18:38, Matt P said:

 

I believe that all of the various cd-63 versions all used the same laser unit, the original Philips one is not available any more but there is a good alternative, there is a guide to swapping it here. 

 

https://www.hifigear.co.uk/blog/marantz-cd63se-laser-transport-mechanism-replacement/

 

Matt 

Fantastic Matt, very much appreciated!!! I'll let you know how it goes. The reviews of the KI are very accurate - it's a great machine.

I have a defunct Marantz 63 KI Signature CD deck, a world-beater in it's day. It died a few months ago. Marantz customer care is diabolical, they referred me to some depot in Blackpool, who didn't want to know because they found it impossible to get parts off Marantz. I suspect the laser has packed in. Calls to many local hi-fi shops have all expressed sympathy for the loss, "great machine", "a classic" etc. but were unable to advise further.

A guy my brother knows builds his own hi-fi so I'll be paying a visit with the deck one I'm safe to stop shielding. In the meantime I have a Pioneer CD-R deck I can use, not as good a sound, but better than many. 

3 minutes ago, ezbass said:

That made me smile.

Apparently one tactic I was told about by an ex-employee was to send a finished guitar on spec to a "name", which they would assume was a sponsorship gift. Then JB would wait a few months then send in an invoice knowing that it would just be processed along with all the others a big band would get on a daily basis. One such gets mentioned occasionally on here.

I don't mean to denigrate John, to me he was a mad professor genius, and even in the last week of his life was working on "a radical new pickup which would be far higher output than Tony (Iommi) had ever heard of". As an electronics expert he not only served on Hawaii (where he "electrified" an acoustic guitar for the base band) for the US forces but was also a Chindit fighting the Japanese in WW2

On 27/07/2020 at 00:39, Count Bassy said:

A shout out for Neutrik as well. Same quality as Switchcraft.

Part No  NYS229  for mono.

I used to always got for Neutrik, from Maplins (RIP). Glad I had a stash of spares bought in before they folded, just put one in a Strat build.

My dream bass was a John Birch EB3 exactly like Slade's Jim Lea. When I had the cash I had him build me one, and in the process became one of the elite few to have been ripped off by John Birch. But it is what it is, I still have it.

http://youtu.be/ffZXnWkbkgs

On 10/02/2020 at 14:24, Tvr said:

Is there a way of dating John Birch guitars from the serial nr? Mine is 5075

His numbering system wasn't very reliable, mine doesn't have one at all.

On 30/06/2020 at 07:11, Grangur said:

You called, Sir?

Hello. Hmm this looks interesting. The popular thought here of "sweating" the wood is what I'd try. The idea of the soldering iron I've never had success with. I use a household steam iron.

Not certain if this will work though. Sweating works when the grain fibees are bent in, this has been hit with a sharp, curved object like a metal tube. The edge gas cut the fibres. Also, as someone else has said, you would damage the lacquered finish. The lacquer also has a colour to it. So rattle-can clear lacquer won't be able to do a great job. 

Wax, as suggested by @Reggaebassis good for cracks and such, but once you have pushed it in here, theres not much for the wax to hold on to. With regards to matching the colour, you use the wax by melting it in your hands and different colour waxes can be blended. So colour is no problem. But it probably won't hold.

The best solution IMHO would be an epoxy-type hard filler and a good colourist would be able to fill it and replicate the grain in the stain used to make it almost invisible.

I would search locally for a furniture finishers or French polishers. They will be best equipped to deal with it.

If you simply want a cheap solution, then I'd simply use a thick superglue epoxy, but that instrument deserves better.

This pretty much covers it. That's a gouge, not a dent, steaming will have very little effect and could easily wreck the finish making it a bigger problem. A good furniture restorer would be my first call,.

Get an old fuse screwdriver and heat the tip to red hot and hold it against the grub screw. being brass it should quickly conduct the heat and expand, which - in theory - should break the grip of the crud, thread lock, or gunk that's seizing it. You might have to do it more than once.

If there's enough of a slot left it also sometimes helps if you turn it slightly to tighten it before trying to unscrew it. Brass is soft, so don't overdo this if you give it a go.

Long term? In it's case, stored vertically.

Otherwise, on a stand.

And just to open another can of worms.......... long term storage with strings tuned or slackened off?

On 29/06/2020 at 21:24, pst62 said:

Getting back to the title of the thread. I saw Queen twice, ............. At Newcastle he used his Red Special and a Telecaster for Crazy Little Thing, he also had a what looked like a sandy coloured replica of the Red special that remained on it's stand............

I'd guess that would have been the John Birch copy that was made and famously destroyed in the wings during a gig, but I believe has now been reassembled. Lovely bit of John Birch lore about that one's origins.

On 29/06/2020 at 21:46, GeeJayW said:

I saw Queen in '74 (Sheer Heart Attack tour) as my first ever live gig. That red special sounded pretty awesome. Pretty sure he's used many guitars over the years, but I saw a video interview with his tech on YouTube and he said that Brian prefers his Red Special whenever he can and that he uses an old sixpence as a pick. Has a jar of them apparently.

Many years ago I used to regularly buy a music magazine, can't remember it's name just now. Each issue's inside cover pulled out into an A3 poster. One edition had a huge collection of famous guitar picks collected by fans. One of which was a "sixpence" which BM had had minted to guarantee a supply, with his profile image on it rather than HM The Queen.

(There was also one of Steve Cropper's labelled "Pick Of The Crop" - ho ho!   One of which I now own.)

On 04/06/2020 at 08:01, Skybone said:

NCRFD - New Custom RickenFaker Day

Loving the use of chickenheads. I had plans to do similar with a black Rockinbetter and white chickenheads but the prices went silly this side of the pond so I gave up the idea. I've since put a couple on a Strat customisation I'm doing now.